Overstreet prices for NM key books : key data or nonsense ?

[hammer-migration]

I have a feeling that Overstreet is not so much a conservative as he is an OLYMPIC scorer when it comes to acceptance of factoring data on sales information. He's throwing out the high and low score effectively trying to keep an accurate, believable middle-ground by disallowing hype, exaggeration, and unsubstantiability. Bob Overstreet is no fool, and to consider him some kind of yesterday's collector that is out of touch with today's market is erroneous. I have no doubt that he is as well aware today of who is buying and selling HIS OWN BOOKS over and over and leaking sales figures on transactions that never occurred as he was decades ago when the "insiders" were TRADING "Church Pedigree" copies back and forth, over and over, and reporting them as CASH sales in a similar effort to hype the high grade market.

The similarities between these two historical hobby advents is almost identical! HIGH grade hype, and a continually burgeoning effort by a few well-heeled hobby collector moguls to INCREASE the multiplying values of NM books logarhythmically in excess of Overstreet NM values.

THEN, the Mile Highs were the vehicle and these ARE worthy of multiples, but when the "big boys" started to TRADE them back and forth, somewhere, many times, the words CASH/TRADE were subject to confusion. First 1.6X guide, then 2.5, then 3X, 5X, 10X, etc. etc., all for a book that was the epitomy, the material definition of what Overstreet stated was NM anyway!!

Same thing with the plastic housing. Sales on 9.4 were brisk in the beginning stages at guide and guide X 1.5/2.0 . Then folks started noticing Manning Auction results. Books bearing multipliers of 3 to 7X. Then the same nonsense was echoed on Ebay and the multiples INCREASED proportinately.

Overstreet simply was NOT caught up in the sensationalism any more than he was when the owner of the Mile High Action 1 was offered $100K for his book, many moons ago, and the guide price was approx. $20K.

Now we all think of the value of a book as being synonymous with what someone is willing to pay on the high end, BUT, approach the equation from the OPPOSITE end for a moment. When the price guide listed AF15 at $10,000, if someone were to find one at a garage sale, in FINE for $10.00, or better yet, was GIVEN one by their Aunt after their Uncle's demise, does that diminish the value of guide price? Should Overstreet factor THAT acquistion into the equation? Of course not!! That's called good fortune, and is as much a non-mitigating factor at arriving at a published value as if some seller at a show "hooked" a victim on an AF15 for DOUBLE price guide fine. There's a cancelling out, otherwise the Marvel 1 in price guide VF/NM would now HAVE to be represented as a "Million dollar book".

Just food for thought.

[clobberintime]

Wow - looks like some of the heavy weights have come to play. Maybe Overstreet himself could respond - or Metro? I don't use any guide much at all anymore as I have focused exclusively on high grade Marvel cgc 9.0+. There seems to be no guide for this stuff and no way to tell the price saying 2x guide or whatever. The price knowledge comes from remembering or accounting for all of it like BronzeBruce or some others do - I think you do also? What guide info helped determine the price of that JiM 103 9.2 at $750 or that FF 112 9.4 I have bid up to $600 etc. Can you make a guide that really reflects all the price fluctuations? i think the best they could do is give anecdotal evidence of verifiable sales. Who really knows which sales are "reAL"? The best evidence is probably ebay and a few select auctions - but do you include the juice price too? I think it would be great if collection sellers knew the value of what they have. isn't that knowledge worth something in itself? that knowledge is what people pay for a lot of times. Even if the guide prices were inflated to reflect higher nm prices, a dealer would still only want to pay some sort of percentage to reflect overhead, selling difficulty, buying the whole thing etc - so I doubt the sellers would net much more than now.

[Kevin Boyd]

My mistake, I don't think he is.

 

I mistook Bruce Hamilton's comments in his preface to the grading guide that Overstreet was going to be acknowledging these grades in the next guide, which, after looking over my materials on the new guide I don't think they are. I guess he just wanted to thank OS and his advisors for describing what might make a book a NM+ or better..

 

He is adding two new grading columns (4.0 and 9.0) now that we are learning that most books previously considered to be NM are really in the 9.0-9.4 range.

 

Kev

[Kevin Boyd]

I would consider paying over guide for a slabbed book (not much though). I do perceive the grading service and the restoration check to be of some value over a similar ungraded copy. How much more depends on the book.

 

I rarely pay over guide for anything. Then again I rarely buy many books worth charging over-guide for. I balk at paying over-guide for issues I need to complete runs.

 

That, however, is my own approach. I don't expect Overstreet to treat CGC graded books any differently than unslabbed books in their price guide.

 

Kev

[aardvark88]

Here's a current link to a long article to the origin of Bob Overstreet's 1970 comic bk pr guide complete with pic of Bob's black dyed hair.

http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_article.asp?ai=2166&si=124

 

 

[The_Man_Of_Steel]

Thanks for the link to the article! I just about fell out of my chair looking at the prices for those key books 30 years ago! Talk about unbelievable inflation!!! It's difficult to imagine that ASM 1 in mint guided at $16 and Showcase # 4 in mint guided at $12...

[blowout]

Don't forget MOS if you bought the first Spidey off the newstand you would have got plenty of change from a quarter.

[The_Man_Of_Steel]

It still would have been nice to pick up a NM/M ASM 1 for $16 according to the first 1970 OverStreet Price! Reading the article, can you imagine that many people complained that the prices were too high? It would seem that these days there may be more complaints that the prices are too low?

 

[COI]

I agree. I've been keeping track of high grade marvel sales on the internet for quite a while. The whole reason I do it is so that I have SOME idea of what to pay for these books.

 

But like you pointed out, the prices are entirely too volatile, and there are too many factors that contribute to a final price. I personally think that Overstreet should make mention of notable CGC sales, which he has been, and leave it at that.

 

Devising an average multiple ratio won't work either. The original title of this thread was pricing for NM KEY books, yet non-key books are also attaining multiples.

 

And from what I've observed, books will go for more solely based on cover art, regardless of whether the book has signicficance or not. A DD #23 in CGC NM might sell for a higher multiple of DD #24(just an example) because of a nicer cover. Recently, a 9.9 ASM #73 was up on Heritage. I would wager that a 9.9 ASM #69 would garner much more, simply because of the cover. Does this mean that #69 should guide for more than #73? I recently sold slabbed copies of ASM #69 and #57 in the same grade, which were listed at the same time, and the #69 outsold the #57. And what do you do when a CGC 9.6 FF 49 sells for 1K more than a #48 in CGC 9.6? How do you effectivley reflect these examples in guide? Quite simply, you can't.

 

And let's say the average multiple of a silver NM book was 5X Guide, and all of a sudden guide prices take a huge jump. What then? Will sellers try getting 5X the new Overstreet?

 

Anyone spending tons of money on CGC graded NM or higher books should study the market, and not get so concerned with what the Overstreet lists. When deciding how much to bid on a CGC graded book, I have never once consulted the guide. But I will check my own records, completed auctions on ebay, the Heritage database, and even dealers' pricing.

 

So IMO the Overstreet should be left as is, and the relatively small segment of individuals who actively purchase CGC 9.4+ books should do their own research and use common sense when making purchases. I've been doing this, and have yet to be burned as a result. This may not necessarily be the ideal solution, but it seems to me to be the only one that will really work.

[fantastic_four]

Bob's black dyed hair

No wonder Bob hasn't upped the NM prices...he's obviously one of those old Golden Age guys who doesn't mind restoration, even to himself. Great article!!!

[fantastic_four]

So IMO the Overstreet should be left as is

If you don't use the guide, why do you care what price he lists there? If the NM 9.4 price of early Silver Marvels tripled in the next guide and the current 9.4 prices shifted down to the 9.0 column, I doubt you'd see people paying triple that new 9.4 price.

[COI]

If you don't use the guide, why do you care what price he lists there?

 

I didn't say I don't use the guide at all, I just don't use it when deciding what to pay for NM or higher CGC graded books. I still buy raw books, and use the guide for that.

 

If the NM 9.4 price of early Silver Marvels tripled in the next guide and the current 9.4 prices shifted down to the 9.0 column, I doubt you'd see people paying triple that new 9.4 price.

 

True, but you may have sellers using the inflated prices to set higher reserves, or price their stuff higher. And that in itself can be a problem. I'm not saying this would happen for sure, but it's a possibility.

[PovertyRow]

Everyone knows key books in NM condition sell for multiples of guide, as long as they're CGC'ed. So why does Overstreet keep listing these books for so low in NM condition ?

 

I think the REAL REASON resides in comic history:CGC and non-CGC are really different markets. Back before CGC we had (and still have) Pedigrees. The pedigrees would originally fetch from about 1.5-3 times guide. Overstreet didn;t jack up the prices based on pedigree sales. But they DID state in their market reports that pedigreed books were selling for x-multiple of guide. Overstreet is doing the same thing for CGC in their Market Reports - stating that CGC'd books in grade are fetching x-amount of guide. That is exactly what they should be doing.

 

Look at the prices of 9.4-9.6 CGC'd books like Devil Dinosaur 1, Battlestar Galactica 1 etc. Over the course of this current Overstreet guide's year, they were going for twice what they are going for right now - with not a lot of interest.

 

Overstreet should continue doing what they are doing: report raw prices and include in their market report the CGC situation. You will not only be reading about how much certain CGC'd books have increased, but how much certain CGCd books have decreased.

[fantastic_four]

The pedigrees would originally fetch from about 1.5-3 times guide. Overstreet didn;t jack up the prices based on pedigree sales. But they DID state in their market reports that pedigreed books were selling for x-multiple of guide. Overstreet is doing the same thing for CGC in their Market Reports - stating that CGC'd books in grade are fetching x-amount of guide. That is exactly what they should be doing.

I give it a better-than-average chance that this year's guide is the one where all that will change for one reason--they're adding the 9.0 column yet maintaining the 9.4 column.

 

If you took 25 well-graded CGC 9.0s and 25 well-graded CGC 9.4s, cracked them out of their slabs, and showed them to every one of the 5,000+ comic book shop owners out there without telling them there's a 25/25 mix, how many of them do you think could take those 50 comics and accurately split them into two stacks, one with 9.0s and the other with 9.4s? I'm thinking it's waaaay less than half. Based upon the way the shops in my area grade, I'd think it would be about 20%-30% of dealers who can tell the difference between a 9.0 and 9.4.

 

So why would Gemstone put in the 9.0 column if very few people can tell the difference? Is it wide-eyed optimism that most people will read the new Grading Guide and magically become tight graders? Would he have ever put the 9.0 column in if CGC hadn't tightened up the average dealer/collector grading ability? Adding that 9.0 column caters very specifically to the top-end collector, and all top-end collectors know about the multiples. Doesn't make sense for him to add a 9.0 column without fixing the problems with the 9.4 column in the process.

[PovertyRow]

I give it a better-than-average chance that this year's guide is the one where all that will change for one reason--they're adding the 9.0 column yet maintaining the 9.4 column

 

I gotta say - that does make sense.

[blowout]

Doesn't make sense for him to add a 9.0 column without fixing the problems with the 9.4 column in the process.

 

I think FF is probably right on this one.

There is still the question of 9.6 and up books, but really this is a very specialised area of collecting and probably should be reserved for the market reports.

[Kevin Boyd]

There is still the question of 9.6 and up books, but really this is a very specialised area of collecting and probably should be reserved for the market reports.

 

HOW IS IT SPECIALIZED? Don't most collectors strive to find the best books that they can find and afford?

 

I do think that one of the reasons why Overstreet has never dealt with books better than NM is that no one before CGC came along could fully guarantee that the books were in fact NM+. It's a buyer beware cautious approach to dealing with possibly NM+ books.

 

I do agree that what many people believed to be NM in the past is really VF+/NM-, hence the need for the 9.0 price column. But will 9.0 prices be lower than last years 9.4 prices or will they be closer to last year's 9.4 prices ? Will the new 9.4 prices be significantly higher to reflect the true scarcity of gold and silver in that grade and the prices that true NM books have been getting on and offline? I guess we'll find out in a couple of weeks.

 

Now that we do have a lot of books in circulation that are recognized by the collecting community as being better than NM I believe that it is somewhat irresponsible for Overstreet as the leading expert on comic book pricing and grading to ignore that area of collecting to the black void of rampant speculation and overpricing.

 

At the very least Overstreet needs to acknowlege that there are books out there that are grading higher than what he is willing to provide price data on and offer some kind of advice to collectors/sellers on how to price these books. Market reports are great, but they are only reflection of individual sales - not a complete reflection of the market as a whole. There are WIDE regional variations in sales reported in the market reports. The purpose of the Overstreet guide is to - IN THEORY - pull all of that data together and make some sense of it.

 

Kev

[fantastic_four]

HOW IS IT SPECIALIZED? Don't most collectors strive to find the best books that they can find and afford?

 

I do think that one of the reasons why Overstreet has never dealt with books better than NM is that no one before CGC came along could fully guarantee that the books were in fact NM+.

Yea, I agree, any price guide should now strive to ascertain prices for 9.6 to 10.0 copies now that CGC has revolutionized the identification of copies in those conditions. However, it's probably too early to actually list those yet.

 

I understand Overstreet's dilemma. When he came out with his first price guide in 1970, he at least had a few decade's worth of buying patterns to pull information from. With 9.6 and above, it's all a new market, and as a new market it's extremely volatile. Bronze 9.6s might go for double guide whereas Silvers might go for 10x to 40x guide today and 3x to 5x guide tomorrow...it's all a matter of how hard to find in that grade they are. Tough call to make right now.

 

You could draw on the historical prices of Pedigrees as a guide, but the problem there is that even though we know a lot of pedigrees are in primo shape, they're not all 9.6 or better. And most of the time we don't know which are in 9.6, which are in 9.8, which are in 9.9, or which are in 10.0, so it'd be tough to use them as anything other than a very rough and very sketchy indicator.

 

We likely need another 3-10 years worth of pricing history to come up with a guide for prices above 9.4.

[Kevin Boyd]

I agree the higher grade market is definitely changing and is relatively volative - perhaps too volatile for a conservative guide like Overstreet's. Nevertheless, they are changing the rules somewhat to tighten the gaps between grades and prices, so perhaps they are collecting data on NM+ books for the future.

 

Because if they don't, then someone else (like Krause) may step in and beat them to it.

 

On the flip side of things, graded books that are not in the NM range are usually selling for below guide - especially non-keys. Are the prices for lower grade books going to fall dramatically based on the changing marketplace? Or are they still performing well raw?

 

Kev

[OldGuy]

"There is still the question of 9.6 and up books, but really this is a very specialised area of collecting and probably should be reserved for the market reports."

 

"HOW IS IT SPECIALIZED? Don't most collectors strive to find the best books that they can find and afford?"

 

You just answered your own question when you said "and afford". Most collectors can't afford 9.6 +. I'd be willing to bet that at least 95% of collectors can't afford 9.6 + books (not Power Pack and [!@#%^&^] like that, but rather key Gold/Silver/Bronze issues). I'd have to say that collecting 9.6 + books is a specialty.